Q&A with The Midcounties Co-operative CIO Jacob Isherwood

Earlier this year, we were thrilled to share that The Midcounties Co-operative had selected Mutual Vision as their technology partner to deliver a new Member Investment Portal. A secure, digital-first platform enabling members to view and manage their share accounts and fixed-term investments in one place.

This innovation is already transforming how members engage with their investments, ensuring that every pound they invest goes further in powering community projects from building new stores and improving local services, to advancing sustainability and reducing carbon footprint.

Bank Local isn’t just about building societies. Co-operatives are showing the same commitment to purpose-driven innovation. The Midcounties Co-operative’s new Member Investment Portal is a powerful example of how mutual organisations can digitise complex processes while staying true to their values. By making investments more accessible, transparent, and efficient, they’re proving that digital transformation can go hand-in-hand with co-operative principles. 

We recently sat down with Jacob Isherwood, CIO of The Midcounties Co-operative, for a candid Q&A about the Society’s digital journey, what the new portal means for members, and his vision for co-operative technology in the future. 

What inspired the decision to digitise the investment experience for Midcounties members? Was this driven by member demand, operational needs, or broader digital strategy?

As a member owned organisation we’re always looking for ways to make our members lives easier. The decision to move to an end-to-end digital solution was driven by the need to give better access for members to invest and manage their existing investments, alongside the need to automate our very manual back-end processes.

How does the new Member Investment Portal align with The Midcounties Co-operative’s long-term vision for ethical finance and community impact?

Our Member Investment prospectus outlines how as a co-operative it’s part of our DNA to work ethically and support our communities. The way we work and the causes we support is all based on what matters to our members most.

What role does digital innovation play in the Society’s wider goals for sustainability, inclusivity, and transparency?

The Society has a digital strategy that recognises we need to improve our services for our members, customers and colleagues. We’ve already created new digital experiences with our improved mobile app and our innovative digital grants portal – Doing Good Together. Our Member Investment portal compliments the digital channels that we’re communicating to our members with.

Can you walk us through the process of selecting Mutual Vision as a technology partner? What stood out about their approach or capabilities?

The needs of co-operative in managing member’s investments are fairly unique and trying to find a suitable partner that can operate at a smaller scale has been difficult. Mutual Vision appealed to us on many levels with their history is of working with mutuals and their ability to right size their solution for a smaller investment portfolio. Given our cautiousness in undertaking this project, at the beginning of our engagement, before signing any delivery contracts we undertook a discovery phase with Mutual Vision. It was clear both during these workshops and in the report completed that Mutual Vision’s consultants listened carefully and came up with a practical solution for our needs.

What were some of the unique requirements Midcounties had as a co-operative, and how did Mutual Vision accommodate those?

As a co-operative every member has a single share in the organisation of a £1. We had to make sure we were accounting for this in the correct way and conducted a number of workshops trying to come up with a technical solution for managing what became known as the ‘magic pound’. It was important that we account properly for this and the various lifecycles that member share accounts can go through as when they join, leave or enter dormancy. Our master data for member records are held outside Mutual Vision in our core membership systems and we also needed to create real-time APIs to setup accounts in Mutual Vision when members join and make sure their magic pound is recorded. For both of these requirements we now have a robust technical and financial solution which ensures our systems and processes support the ownership principles of a co-operative.

How would you describe the collaboration between your internal team and Mutual Vision during the build and rollout?

The Midcounties and Mutual Vision team collaborated closely through the deliver of the project to make sure the final system met the needs of both the Member Investment team and our member investors.

The transition from manual to digital was significant. What were the biggest challenges during the implementation, especially given the scale of the data migration?

Mutual Vision’s initial plan incorporated multiple test migrations and was clearly informed by their previous experience undertaking migrations with their other customers. For the project, we had a dedicated data migration expert who worked closely with our teams to prepare mappings and conduct test migrations. Despite our initial concerns on data migration, the multiple runs gave us plenty of opportunity to cleanse data and prepare well for the eventual move. We did have to undertake a lot of cleansing on core member information and tweak our membership systems to make sure we collate quality data going forwards.

The biggest challenge came in integrating our membership systems to Mutual Vision via API. Complexities arose on both sides during testing and we worked hard to resolve the issues, uncovering some edge cases that need to be accounted for.

The portal went live following a full core banking replacement in just 13 months — a tight timeline. How did you manage risk, continuity, and member experience during that period?

Although a large element of this project has been technical in nature we were conscious that for this to be success we needed to make sure the new investment portal landed well with members. Our Member Investments and Communications teams have run a parallel workstream ensuring new messaging, copy and marketing were in place for go live. They also designed a programme of engagement for existing members to encourage them to utilise the new portal post go live and this has been successful.

Have you seen any early indicators of success since the platform launched — such as increased member engagement or operational efficiencies?

Since go live we have steadily increased our engagement with members, going out in tranches so that we could ensure everything was working as expected. We have had a really good response rate from members signing up to the portal with new investments from existing member investors and new investors.

What new capabilities or features can members now access that weren’t possible before?

Members are now able to sign up for investments online which includes a digital process for validating who they are and carrying out identity checks. They can view their investments securely and make credits and withdrawals easily without having to phone us up. We’ve tried to make the sign-up process as easy as possible, which can be confusing as you must already be a member of the society before you can utilise the portal.

How have members responded so far to the ability to view and manage their investments online?

We have seen a good number of member investors signing up for our online portal – with existing members checking out their investments, signing-up for new investments and also new member investors applying online.

For members who are less digitally inclined, what support is being provided to ensure no one is left behind?

We take access extremely seriously for all members and continue to support members over the telephone or in writing in the same way we have before. With Mutual Vision we’ve purchased passbook printers and can print directly from the application on to the passbooks.

Now that the portal is live, what’s next on your digital roadmap? Are there plans to expand its functionality or integrate with other services?

Once we’re settled into utilising the new solution, we’d like to look at offering new product types to members and look at how we could use our member investments in alternative ways.